We don't often think of #StRoseofLima as a Counter-Reformation saint, but her life witnesses to Catholic truth against the errors of Protestantism--especially Calvinism--as much as do the lives of Sts. Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila, Pius V, and Charles Borromeo. 
Rose knew that the quality of penance is not in its ugliness. To the contrary, austerity reveals its truth in beauty. The disciplined soul is elevated and reordered--recreated--by grace, and thus remade the soul cannot but radiate divine beauty even in its austerity.
As a complement to her austerity, Rose indulged in beauty. Like her Baroque contemporaries, she created beauty. Not on the scale of great artists, but in a way--anticipating the Little Way of St. Thérèse--that beautified the small and the ordinary in the homes of her neighbors.
Through her gardening and embroidery--through stewardship and craft--Rose expressed the beauty of her soul's transformation, veiled by her penance, in the beautiful things that she made for others. The beauty that God was creating in her she attempted to replicate around her.
Rose knew that beauty is not the enemy of mortification and penance, but rather the sensual expression of its fruit. In Counter-Reformation fashion, Rose confirmed the link between penance and pulchritude: austerity flourishes under the shelter of beauty.
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